Sandy Parker, longtime Rochester company neighborhood leader has died

Sandy Parker, the longtime head of the former Rochester Small business Alliance and just one of the most influential forces in the region, died Saturday. She was 75.

Pals and former company associates verified her loss of life and reported it was unexpected.

Parker was a key player in forming what nowadays is recognized as the Better Rochester Chamber of Commerce.

It was Parker, who as head of the nonprofit small business organization, Industrial Management Council, orchestrated a merger amongst her team and what was then the Increased Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce in 2002. The two groups combined the adhering to year to variety the Rochester Company Alliance, which was afterwards rebranded as the Better Rochester Chamber of Commerce.

The bringing collectively of the two groups was no tiny feat. Executing so expected the two teams to established aside bitter dissimilarities that in 1994 resulted in the head of the Higher Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Mooney, being removed from the Industrial Management Council board.

Melding the chamber, which encourages neighborhood enterprises, and the council, which presented human resources providers and coaching to region enterprises, proficiently made the Rochester Company Alliance a more robust advocate for the area’s enterprise group and an influential power in a vast selection of community issues, including training policies, publicly-financed construction jobs, and skyrocketing health care costs.

Mooney headed the recently formed Rochester Business Alliance as a result of 2004, and Parker took above from there right before ceding her title as president to previous mayor and lieutenant governor Robert Duffy in 2015.

In the course of her time at the helm of the business, Parker was acknowledged as a facilitator and an astute diplomat who was expert at coaching, cueing, and coddling a extensive collection of Rochester firms, from large and smaller makers to well being treatment firms, educational establishments, nonprofit companies, and vendors.

In 2006, hardly far more than a year into her term as president of the Rochester Enterprise Alliance, she brokered yet another merger that saw the alliance soak up the nonprofit organization collective, Rump Team, which was headed by regional developer and entrepreneur, John “Dutch” Summers, who she would later marry.  

On Sunday, Jennifer Leonard, president and CEO of Rochester Space Community Basis also referred to Parker’s skill “to pull alongside one another different sectors of our group, on behalf of the neighborhood.”

Leonard explained that Parker designed a coalition that went every yr to Albany with a set of unified requests. In terms of Parker’s leadership design, Leonard claimed that, “She was eager to be out front when she desired to be and she was satisfied to be behind the scenes building things come about.”

When Parker retired from the Rochester Business Alliance, she explained to WXXI Information in a December 2014 interview that whilst she experienced not understood she would be in her function at the RBA as long as she was, she would even now skip the work.

“This career has been very satisfying to me, it’s been amazing from the standpoint that each individual day, it’s been anything distinct. I have gotten to meet many distinctive, just seriously thrilling and exciting people today at all degrees across the condition, I’m going to overlook that,” Parker mentioned.

Later on in her tenure at the Rochester Business Alliance, Parker would co-identified Unshackle Upstate, a coalition of business teams that has considering the fact that been renamed Upstate United and advocates for lower taxes and fewer rules in New York to spur financial growth. 

On Sunday, Duffy introduced a assertion contacting Parker, “an unsung hero in the Higher Rochester neighborhood for a long time, contributing her time, assets, and knowledge to innumerable philanthropic and economic growth initiatives. In partnership with her spouse, Dutch Summers, Sandy’s contributions to, and enthusiasm for, instructional endeavors were being unmatched.”

Duffy reported that, “Without exaggeration, countless numbers of young minds ended up shaped and improved because of to the generosity of Sandy, who observed these youngsters via from grammar university to their college or university graduations. Sandy quietly seeded goodness all over the Rochester local community for many years, sitting down on dozens of boards and councils, in no way trying to find interest or recognition.

“Sandy Parker experienced a profound effects on me personally and skillfully, often
supplying invaluable assistance and assistance through every single phase of my vocation. Sandy’s tale will be instructed in the coming times, weeks, months, and a long time by the a lot of, quite a few individuals whose life were touched and designed far better by her,” Duffy said.

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren issued this statement on Sunday:

“Sandy Parker was a warrior and winner for employers in Greater Rochester, aiding direct the area via difficult periods. She was at any time vigilant in guaranteeing that Rochester’s organization community was read by neighborhood leaders and that they responded to the requirements of our nearby economy.

“I will bear in mind her from my times operating for former Assemblyman David Gantt with whom she had a potent partnership. Her passing is a unfortunate day for our metropolis, but we will keep on being grateful to her for building our community a good place to dwell and get the job done. My sincere condolences go out to her wife or husband, John “Dutch” Summers, and all of her relatives and loved kinds,” Warren explained.

Jaime Saunders, President & CEO at the United Way of Increased Rochester mentioned that Parker was a mentor for her and numerous other people. “Sandy, definitely for many years, was a person of quite couple women in the place and she retained opening doors for other folks together her route. Most not too long ago she has the Parker Students at Mercy High Faculties, she’s been passionate in creating chances readily available to any one and everyone. She thought in chances and opportunities,” Saunders explained.

David Andreatta is Editor at Metropolis, a media companion of WXXI. He can be achieved at [email protected].

Randy Gorbman is Information Director at WXXI, He can be arrived at at  [email protected]